House of Lords (Hereditary Peers) Act 2026

Commons bill Government Bill 2025-26 Act of Parliament

Sponsor

Pat McFadden

+ 1 co-sponsor

Baroness Smith of Basildon (Labour)

Introduced

5 September 2024

Royal Assent

18 March 2026

Parliament

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About this bill

A Bill to remove the remaining connection between hereditary peerage and membership of the House of Lords; to make provision about resignation from the House of Lords; to abolish the jurisdiction of the House of Lords in relation to claims to hereditary peerages; and for connected purposes.

Parliamentary stages

Stages shown in blue link to the debate transcript. Not sure what these stages mean? How Parliament makes laws →

Commons

✓ First reading 5 Sep 2024

✓ Second reading 15 Oct 2024↗

✓ Programme motion 15 Oct 2024

✓ Committee of the Whole House 12 Nov 2024↗

✓ Third reading 12 Nov 2024↗

✓ Consideration Of Lords Amendments 4 Sep 2025

Lords

✓ First reading 13 Nov 2024

✓ Second reading 11 Dec 2024↗

✓ Committee stage 3 Mar 2025↗

✓ Report stage 2 Jul 2025

✓ Third reading 21 Jul 2025

✓ Consideration Of Commons Amendments And / Or Reasons 10 Mar 2026

Final stages

✓ Royal Assent 18 Mar 2026

Some stage debates occurred before our Hansard archive begins (May 2025). Links marked ↗ go to Parliament's own Hansard for that date.

Parliamentary information from bills.parliament.uk ↗, licensed under the Open Parliament Licence v3.0. Explanatory Notes extracts are verbatim from Parliament's published documents.

What this bill is about

From the Explanatory Notes (November 2024):

1 The main purpose of the Bill is to remove the right of hereditary peers to sit and vote in the House of Lords.

Read the full Explanatory Notes ↗